As you might be dimly aware, the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, had quite a bad day yesterday. Having conducted an interview with ITV News on the crumbling concrete crisis that has forced school closures at the 11th hour before the start of term, Keegan was still miked up when she inquired, apparently rhetorically: “Does anyone ever say: ‘You know what, you’ve done a fucking good job, because everyone else has sat on their arse and done nothing’? No signs of that, no?” No. Nope. Not seeing any signs of that, I’m afraid. In fact, the mere fact of this interview has obliterated the possibility of signs-of-that emerging. It was signs-ocidal.
Fans of turbo-cringe TV will have enjoyed Gillian later being forced, Clockwork Orange-style, to watch this clip of herself live on Sky News. Her reactions were shown in split-screen; when it got to the bad bit, Keegan actually let out a laugh. Some people have chosen to categorise this as typical-heartless-Tory-not-giving-a-toss, but it was surely the involuntary nervous reaction of someone being made to watch the most embarrassing moment of her day – and indeed her decade – on live TV. As the laugh escaped her lips, I imagined her spad silently gnawing through his entire fist in the green room. Like the recent Black Mirror episode Joan Is Awful, the spectacle of Gillian Is Awful was grimly brilliant and brilliantly grim.
